Third Hemispheric Conference of the Struggle Against the FTAA

Communication Challenges from the Perspective of the Excluded

28/01/2004
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Journalists; communicators; students; and radio, TV, and video producers from Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Canada, Peru, the United States, and Cuba, who participated in the workshop entitled "Media and Communication" in the Third Hemispheric Conference of the Struggle Against the FTAA in Havana, dedicated themselves to strengthening and making more dynamic the flows of information of the Continental Campaign against the FTAA with the purpose of raising consciousness of the topic in broad sectors of society in this part of the world. The workshop, coordinated by Sally Burch, executive secretary of the Latin American Information Agency (ALAI); José Ramón Vidal, coordinator of the Popular Communications Program of the Dr. Martín Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center; and José Dos Santos, vice- president of the Cuban Journalists´ Union started off the debate in turn about important topics such the visualization of communication themes as an element which weaves through the rest of the main parts of the Continental Campaign and the proposal of actions that feed this key strategy. According to Sally Burch, "one of the great challenges of communications for this new stage of the struggle against the FTAA is for the information channels not only to permanently join with the discussion agenda of the Continental Campaign but to work to be more and more creative, wide-reaching, dynamic, and dependable in matching the issues to the characteristics of the identity of the people to whom there are aimed, at the national and the hemispheric level." For the communicators of the region, the issue has another key point: the achievement of alliances and communication strategies which stimulate the individual and collective creativity among those who work directly with the alternative media and the entire cultural sector of our nations: editorialists, analysts, academics, students of communications and sociology, writers, artists, and intellectuals looking not only to add their efforts but to share concrete experiences and actions, making more powerful and visible the talent and the indigenous cultural expressions of our region against the FTAA Another of the most important demands of the workshop was the perfection of the most efficient means of communicative productions which more and more have been coming together in networks and other spaces of the social movements on the continental stage, through messages, publicity campaigns, websites, community radio, and promotion and educational actions in every country Another moment of important reflection for the workshop attendees was to achieve a greater presence of the topic of communication, the press, and communicative and cultural productions in the discussions on the FTAA and the free trade agreements, from the positions and just demands which today are the protagonists of the social movements. Interesting action proposals received an excellent welcome on the part of the participants; for example, those of Luis Berrizbertia of TV-Vive, from Venezuela, who offered spaces of that new television channel to exhibit audiovisual materials from any country of the continent and to share the experiences of the Venezuelan producers with the rest of their colleagues in the region. Juan Cárdenas, of Chiapas Community Radio, explained, for his part, the project of the Free Radio Area of the Americas (FRAA), still under construction, which several producers are already working on and which consists of an internet radio network which would communicate community radio from all over the hemisphere to carry the humblest messages against the FTAA using creative and provocative language and forms of presentation One of the dangers of the FTAA and the free trade treaties is precisely the attempt to impose a clause by which all that which is not explicitly excluded is included. That is to say, if there is no existing legislation about cultural issues and the media, it immediately is included in the bilateral accords and the FTAA as the negotiation packet, in such a way that it has negative repercussions on all of the countries that won´t be able to establish policies to protect the sovereignty of their culture and their means of information and communication faced with international investment, which also includes the radioelectic spectrum. For the communicators of the Americas the challenge is so immense that the actions and strategies require the rebirth of forms, methods, and communication alternatives to fight that which seeks to swallow up our identities, our history, and our collective memory
https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/109319
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